Home > Daily Links, Dec 22: The days get longer, George on gay rights, and Santorum on income inequality

Daily Links, Dec 22: The days get longer, George on gay rights, and Santorum on income inequality

By Meghan Murphy-Gill |Print |Share

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FINALLY, we’ve made it to the winter solstice! After today’s longest night, we’re on our way back to more sunlight. The Washington Post has a nice little write up[1] on why tonight’s the longest night and not last night as well as on other variations. Personally, I’ve always loved that Christmas always falls just after the solstice. It’s when the night is long, but things are already beginning to look up. Just seems an appropriate setting for the incarnation.

Inappropriate, on the other hand, was how Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George likened gay rights as a movement that could “morph into something like the Klu Kulx Klan.”[2] Somehow I fail to see how a movement seeking to expand the rights of a minority group could ever be compared to a racist, bigoted group that seeks to diminish the rights of another minority group.

Adding to the list of Catholics who say insane things is Rick Santorum who says he’s for income inequality[3] because anything other than that is, wait for it...Marxism or socialism, and that’s what Obama is. Well, that kind of demonizing rhetoric isn’t new for extremist Repbulicans, for a Catholic, it flies in the face of the church’s social teaching, as Vox Nova points out.[4]

The Chrisiain Century asks whether food drives are worthwhile[5] (with a tongue twister of an intro: Are good deeds primarily about the good done for others or the good the doing does for the do-gooder?). The conclusion: it makes people feel good, but it’s more effective to write a check. My thoughts: Do a food drive for the kids, integrating the lessons of helping the poor into worship and Sunday school, but ask adults for cash donations.